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What then, in sum, is to be thought of Love and of his "birth"
as we are told of it?
Clearly we have to establish the significance, here, of Poverty
and Possession, and show in what way the parentage is
appropriate: we have also to bring these two into line with the
other Supernals since one spirit nature, one spirit essence, must
characterize all unless they are to have merely a name in common.
We must, therefore, lay down the grounds on which we distinguish
the Gods from the Celestials- that is, when we emphasize the
separate nature of the two orders and are not, as often in
practice, including these Spirits under the common name of Gods.
It is our teaching and conviction that the Gods are immune to all
passion while we attribute experience and emotion to the
Celestials which, though eternal Beings and directly next to the
Gods, are already a step towards ourselves and stand between the
divine and the human.
But by what process was the immunity lost? What in their nature
led them downwards to the inferior?
And other questions present themselves.
Does the Intellectual Realm include no member of this spirit
order, not even one? And does the Kosmos contain only these
spirits, God being confined to the Intellectual? Or are there
Gods in the sub-celestial too, the Kosmos itself being a God, the
third, as is commonly said, and the Powers down to the Moon being
all Gods as well?
It is best not to use the word "Celestial" of any Being of that
Realm; the word "God" may be applied to the Essential-Celestial-
the autodaimon- and even to the Visible Powers of the Universe of
Sense down to the Moon; Gods, these too, visible, secondary,
sequent upon the Gods of the Intellectual Realm, consonant with
Them, held about Them, as the radiance about the star.
What, then, are these spirits?
A Celestial is the representative generated by each Soul when it
enters the Kosmos.
And why, by a Soul entering the Kosmos?
Because Soul pure of the Kosmos generates not a Celestial Spirit
but a God; hence it is that we have spoken of Love, offspring of
Aphrodite the Pure Soul, as a God.
But, first what prevents every one of the Celestials from being
an Eros, a Love? And why are they not untouched by Matter like
the Gods?
On the first question: Every Celestial born in the striving of
the Soul towards the good and beautiful is an Eros; and all the
Souls within the Kosmos do engender this Celestial; but other
Spirit-Beings, equally born from the Soul of the All, but by
other faculties of that Soul, have other functions: they are for
the direct service of the All, and administer particular things
to the purpose of the Universe entire. The Soul of the All must
be adequate to all that is and therefore must bring into being
spirit powers serviceable not merely in one function but to its
entire charge.
But what participation can the Celestials have in Matter, and in
what Matter?
Certainly none in bodily Matter; that would make them simply
living things of the order of sense. And if, even, they are to
invest themselves in bodies of air or of fire, the nature must
have already been altered before they could have any contact with
the corporeal. The Pure does not mix, unmediated, with body-
though many think that the Celestial-Kind, of its very essence,
comports a body aerial or of fire.
But why should one order of Celestial descend to body and another
not? The difference implies the existence of some cause or medium
working upon such as thus descend. What would constitute such a
medium?
We are forced to assume that there is a Matter of the
Intellectual Order, and that Beings partaking of it are thereby
enabled to enter into the lower Matter, the corporeal.
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